Season of KDE is a community outreach program, much like Google Summer of Code that has been hosted by the KDE community for seven years.

It is meant for people who could not get into Google Summer of Code for various reasons, or people who simply prefer a differently structured, somewhat less constrained program. Season of KDE is managed by the same team of admins and mentors that takes care of Google Summer of Code and Google Code-in matters for KDE, with the same level of quality and care.

Season of KDE 2015 is now open for applications. To apply head to season.kde.org register as a student and click "Submit a proposal".

KDE, through its legal body KDE e.V., is one of the launch partners and initial signatories of the User Data Manifesto 2.0. The User Data Manifesto defines basic rights for people to control their own data in the internet age:

Control over user data access

Knowledge of how the data is stored

Freedom to choose a platform

KDE e.V. President Lydia Pintscher explains "I believe that in today’s world where more and more of our daily life depends on technology it is crucial that people have control over that technology. You should be empowered to know what your technology does and you should be empowered to influence it. This is at the core of Free Software. Unfortunately it is not at the core of most of the technology people interact with every day – quite the opposite – walled gardens and locks wherever you look with few exceptions.

"KDE is working hard to provide you with technology that you control every single day so you are empowered and the one ultimately in charge of your technology, data and life – the basis for freedom for many today. This is written down in the first sentence of our manifesto: “We are a community of technologists, designers, writers and advocates who work to ensure freedom for all people through our software.”

"Do you want to join us in providing more people with more access to Free technology? Today is a good day!

KDE software has been used in many large scale deployments, including universities, governments and countless companies.

One of these organizations suggested that KDE create a deployment forum so that others can benefit from their deployment experience. The forum would provide an opportunity for sysadmins and developers to ask questions and discuss problems/solutions related to deploying KDE software in large, complex environments.

All administrators of any deployments planned or in progress are invited to join this list to share and field questions. KDE developers and people maintaining Linux distributions with KDE software will also participate.

The Randa Meetings are happening now in the Swiss Alps. More than 50 people are giving their time to improve KDE software and innovate new value for users. The theme of this sixth edition of the Randa Meetings is Bring Touch to KDE, and the KDE Visual Design Group (VDG) is making their contributions to the look and feel of KDE technology. Visual appearance has been a primary consideration for KDE from the beginning—"users [should be able to] expect things to look, feel, and work consistently".

To wrap up the KDE Incubator success stories, here's a bit from the Kdenlive folks.

Kdenlive, one of the rare free-as-in-speech video editors, started its life more than 12 years ago using KDE3 libraries. At that time, it was mostly the effort of a single person—coding, fixing bugs, publishing releases, managing the website. There was no real connection with the KDE Community. Good contributions came in from other people, but no team was built, a risky situation. In 2013, the main developer, Jean-Baptiste Mardelle, was not able to work on the project, so it was on hold for several months and had some technical problems. We tracked him down like a "Giant Spy" to get the project running until his return! That taught us a lesson. When Mario Fux presented the KDE Manifesto, it was the exact answer to our problem.

Continuing the series about KDE Incubator let's hear how KXStitch went through the process. KXStitch was incubated early and quickly.

As Steve Allewell tells us: "In May 2014 I was contacted by Jeremy Whiting, a contributing developer to KDE, to see if I would be interested in submitting the KXStitch application to the KDE Incubator. KXStitch is an editor for counted cross stitch patterns and had already been in development for more than ten years as an independent KDE application. It was hosted on Sourceforge and as the main developer I was supported by a number of people who had provided ideas, testing, bug fixes and some translations.

The KDE Incubator is an effort to help such applications to be migrated into the KDE infrastructure. This is something that I had already been considering, so it was an ideal opportunity to make that transition.